UPDATE2: There’s now some question about who is who regarding the editing of the Connolley page at Wikipedia.One of the problems with Wikipedia is the use of handles. In the messages sent to me seen below, it appears that they came from William Connolley via the Wikipedia message system, but can’t be sure since the identity of the people who have handles and are involved in active editing aren’t known it appears not to be the case. This is one of the central problems with Wikipedia- anonymous editing lends to the confusion. While it is clear that Mr. Connolley has in fact edited his own page in the past, I have removed a reference to self editing in the current time frame because of the uncertainty he did not do so recently. My apologies for the confusion. – Anthony
======
People send me things. Here’s a story about a thread of recent exchanges that appeared in Wikipedia in the “talk” section regarding William Connolley’s page. This incident highlights the shape shifting nature of the information presented on Wikipedia, and how it is subject to the whims of ego and agenda. With information changing character literally in minutes, how could anyone treat Wikipedia as a reliable reference? I’ll coin a new word and call this “turborevisionism” due to the speed, sound, and fury it characterizes.
Consider the “Neutral Point of View” required by Wikipedia policy:
Neutral point of view (NPOV) is a fundamental Wikimedia principle and a cornerstone of Wikipedia. All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles and all editors.
The editor who takes issue with this event writes:
On Sunday night, I went to the William Connolley wiki page and entered:
Additional criticism appeared on December 19, 2009, in nationalpost.com, as “How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles.” This alleges that Connolley removed more than 500 wiki articles of which he disapproved; that he published inaccurate information on the controversial “hockey stick” graph; that he specifically opposed scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
That disappeared within an hour (maybe less); I reinserted it. On Monday night, checked again: text gone. I wished to re-enter it, but the [edit] facility was totally missing from the wiki page. Hardly ever saw that before.
Found a msg from Connolley directly to me:
William Connolley I’m the original author of the paragraph at William Connolley that deals with the Lawrence Solomon article of December 2009. I note you inserted some specific detail that I acutally removed, as I believed it only caused confusion between opinion and fact, and isn’t really necessary, anyway. I don’t want to add any more reverts to that already poorly abused article, so I’m urging you to reconsider your addition of the detail. Cheers. —Ħ MIESIANIACAL 05:58, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
___________________________________________
Date: Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 11:53 PM
Wikipedia activity
In 2005, an article in the scientific journal Nature compared the reliability of Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. It discussed Connolley as an example of an expert who regularly contributes to Wikipedia.[8]
A July 2006 article in The New Yorker reported that Connolley briefly became “a victim of an edit war over the entry on global warming”, in which a skeptic repeatedly “watered down” the article’s explanation of the greenhouse effect.[9] The skeptic later brought the case before Wikipedia’s arbitration committee, claiming that Connolley was pushing his own point of view in the article by removing material with opposing viewpoints. The arbitration committee imposed a “humiliating one-revert-a-day” editing restriction on Connolley. Wikipedia “gives no privilege to those who know what they’re talking about”, Connolley told The New Yorker.[9] The restriction was later revoked, and Connolley went on to serve as a Wikipedia administrator from January 2006 until 13 September 2009.[9]
An October 2006 article in Nature contrasted the Citizendium online encyclopedia project, which makes a point of recruiting experts from academia, with Wikipedia. It quoted Connolley as saying that “some scientists have become frustrated with Wikipedia”, but that “conflict can sometimes result in better articles”.[10]
___________________________________________
Just appeared in wiki (by Mason):
Additional criticism appeared on December 19, 2009, in nationalpost.com, as “How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles.” This alleges that Connolley removed more than 500 wiki articles of which he disapproved; that he published inaccurate information on the controversial “hockey stick” graph; that he specifically opposed scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
__________________________________________
Instantly changed to:
An October 2006 article in Nature contrasted the Citizendium online encyclopedia project, which makes a point of recruiting experts from academia, with Wikipedia. It quoted Connolley as saying that “some scientists have become frustrated with Wikipedia”, but that “conflict can sometimes result in better articles”.[10]
Mason corx, 2009 XII 21, 12:45 AM & again 12:51 AM:
[[Lawrence Solomon]], on December 19, 2009, penned a piece in the ”[[National Post]]” that accused Connolley of editing Wikipedia and using administrative power in order to subvert opinion that disagreed with his own, linking the supposed activity to the [[Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident|Climategate scandal]].<ref>{{Citation| last=Solomon| first=Lawrence| author-link=Lawrence Solomon| title=Wikipedia’s climate doctor| newspaper=National Post| date=December 19, 2009| url=http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/19/lawrence-solomon-wikipedia-s-climate-doctor.aspx| accessdate=December 19, 2009}}</ref> The specific allegation was,”How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles,” claiming that Connolley removed more than 500 wiki articles of which he disapproved; that he published inaccurate information on the controversial “hockey stick” graph; that he specifically opposed scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
__________________________
2009 XII 21 midnight: txt missing again. Mason want to re-inserts txt, cannot because the facility [edit] is now missing :
[[Lawrence Solomon]], on December 19, 2009, penned a piece in the ”[[National Post]]” that accused Connolley of editing Wikipedia and using administrative power in order to subvert opinion that disagreed with his own, linking the supposed activity to the [[Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident|Climategate scandal]].<ref>{{Citation| last=Solomon| first=Lawrence| author-link=Lawrence Solomon| title=Wikipedia’s climate doctor| newspaper=National Post| date=December 19, 2009| url=http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/19/lawrence-solomon-wikipedia-s-climate-doctor.aspx| accessdate=December 19, 2009}}</ref> The specific allegation was,”How Wikipedia’s green doctor rewrote 5,428 climate articles,” claiming that Connolley removed more than 500 wiki articles of which he disapproved; that he published inaccurate information on the controversial “hockey stick” graph; that he specifically opposed scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
_____________________________________
Msg from William Connolley to Mason, 2009 XII 22:
William Connolley
I’m the original author of the paragraph at William Connolley that deals with the Lawrence Solomon article of December 2009. I note you inserted some specific detail that I acutally removed, as I believed it only caused confusion between opinion and fact, and isn’t really necessary, anyway. I don’t want to add any more reverts to that already poorly abused article, so I’m urging you to reconsider your addition of the detail. Cheers. —Ħ MIESIANIACAL 05:58, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
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Anthony,
I think this post may be somewhat factually incorrect. If you look at the history of edits on WC’s page, he has not edited his own biography any time in the past 12 months: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Connolley&limit=500&action=history
Additionally, per the talk page there:
“Like Solomon’s op-ed discussed above, this blog post appears to be both confused and inaccurate. It is trivial to look at the history of this article: history. WMC’s last edit to it was more than a year ago (in September 2008) and removed a single inaccurate, misplaced category. (For some reason, someone misidentified him as a ‘Global warming critic’: diff.) His last edit preceding that one was in September 2006, and corrected a typo in an AfD notice: diff. In August 2006, he corrected a typo in the name of his village: diff. He hasn’t made a significant edit to this article in more than three years. In total, WMC has made fewer than twenty edits to the article, they have tended to be minor, and the bulk of them took place in 2005.”
This is fairly easy to verify by glancing at the edit history.
REPLY: I don’t know that it is factually incorrect, since I don’t know the identity of the people behind the anonymous editing handles involved. As it was presented to me it appears factually correct, but looking through the history, there’s a lot of confusion over who is who. Not having access to the Wikipedia message system one can’t see the messages upon which this is based. Therefore due to this uncertainty I’ve removed the reference to self editing, and I’ll leave it to Wikipedia to sort out. – Anthony
Frank (09:26:31) :
“Looking into this in more detail, the National Post article is actually a blog, and blogs are not credible sources in Wikipedia’s policy.”
Perhaps in theory, but with wikipedia those with the numbers make and interpret the rules. For example, the blog “real climate” is constantly used by Connolley et all as a “reliable source” to alter articles.
And so we have an interesting situation where a (co)author of a blog can quote himself (or people with whom he has input) in order to make his own case on wikipedia.
Hell, he can just make up or order any source he needs if he wants to – it is ridiculous.
O/T…may be a good article to link to.
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/22/build-a-climate-scare-why-you-should-boycott-build-a-bear/
Part of the text:
——————-
Girl Elf: Santa, it’s gone!
Papa Elf: It’s gone, It’s gone!
Santa: What’s gone?
Girl Elf: Tell ‘em, Dad!
Papa Elf: The North Peak.
Santa: A mountain? A mountain’s gone? How is that possible?
Ella the polar bear: Santa, sir, that’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re here. The ice is melting!
Santa: Yes, my dear, we know, the climate is changing. There’s bound to be a little melting.
Ella: It’s worse than that, Santa, a lot worse! At the rate it’s melting, the North Pole will be gone by Christmas!”
Santa: My, my…all of this gone by next Christmas? I don’t think so.
Ella: No sir, not next Christmas, this Christmas! The day after tomorrow!
Controversial topics like global warming and climate change should allow both sides of the issue to be presented, perhaps in separate entries. It is clear that the only side allowed on Wikipedia is pro-AWG, and this is so in almost every entry related to these issues. The results of recent polls suggest that skepticism is widespread and by no means a fringe phenomenon, and that the gap between public opinion and the AGW orthodoxy is increasing, paradoxically, in spite of such gigantic one-sided propaganda efforts as evinced by Wikipedia and the main media.
It seems that propaganda reaches a saturation point beyond which it has no effect, or it may rather have the opposite effect, especially on working people. The educated are generally more vulnerable to all kinds of nonsense if it is repeated to them with a scientific patina. Monckton thinks this is due to the fact that common peole may have a stronger and healthier common sense, more difficult to deform. Noam Chomsky has also theorized along similar lines, and insists that on many many topics, popular public opinion sees through official nonsense and pieties much more easily than the educated managerial classes. It is the latter, he insists, that are the main target of indoctrination; they are the ones that must be indoctrinated at all costs. And this applies to all aspects of the political spectrum Consider for example, during an election in Venezuela a few years ago, the main media was almost totally in control of the opposition, and they entered into a round-the-clock demonization campaign for months on end, with no effect on the opinion of working people (the majority), who continued to support Chavez, while the more illuminated sectors developed rabid hatred of him fueled by the media.
Monckton says in today’s blog at SPPI:
http://sppiblog.org/news/a-sense-of-due-proportion#more-379
“What the mainstream instruments of propaganda have entirely failed to grasp is that, even if politicians and bureaucrats and environmental correspondents are fatally stupid, the people possess an innate common sense, known to Catholic theologians as the sensus fidelium, which prevents propaganda from influencing them except in the very short term. In the long run, the people can always be relied upon to hold fast to that sense of due proportion that the ancient Greeks at once admired and exemplified. That is why the pusillanimous propaganda of our ruling elite – far too shrill of late to be in the least convincing – has not convinced.”
How often does bias cross the line into libel?
Wikipedia is currently in some form of financial trouble guessing by the constant begging for money at the top of every page.
WE ARE IN A PROPAGANDA WAR.
Most people seem to be missing this point. The climate changers had all the advantage from the beginning because the first principle ie; “the world is heating up” …
It’s a lie.
The enemy defined the battle from the start.
Our side had to engage them on a field where the targets are marked and crossed by enfilading fire. No wonder we get croaking frog disclaimers from even our most clear thinking politicians and scientists, confining themselves to arguing “man didn’t do it”, nipping around the perimeter while ignoring the monolithic lie.
Wiki is in a financial distress. It’s time to kick them in the head. It’s time to force them to use scarce resources in the legal dept.
How many WUWT readers have been slandered directly by name by the minions of Wiki?
File papers. Make them take that stuff down. The UK has incredibly friendly libel laws. And haven’t you noticed that the pushers of the global warming, ignoring Al Gores contributions, are predominantly Brits?
What would happen to wiki if it were suddenly forced to fight 10, 100, or 1000 libel suits at the same time?
Why they would be put off the net entirely.
And the world would be a better place.
” Zeke Hausfather (11:28:12) :
Anthony,
I think this post may be somewhat factually incorrect. If you look at the history of edits on WC’s page, he has not edited his own biography any time in the past 12 months: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Connolley&limit=500&action=history”
Correct, he finally got booted off his own article and now relegates cleaning duty to two of his biggest lackeys – Stephan Schulz and Kim Dabelstein Petersen. Sorry, but having your friends on facebook constantly editting your article is just as bad but more subtle.
I think Wikipedia should allow multiple versions of a topic. They could be numbered and the original creator of each topic version would maintain editorial control over the page. The end result would be that the original creator shapes his or her version of the topic into what he/she thinks it should be. Contributors would go to the topic’s version that they agree with.
The end result would be that readers of Wikipedia can shop around a particular topic and get a wide variety of information and viewpoints. That is something they cannot get now from Wikipedia.
People like William Connelley destroyed the viability of Usenet 10 to 15 years ago.
As others have said, what evidence is there that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Miesianiacal is William Connolley?
I’m just about fed up with all these moral midgets that believe they are sooo much more intelligent than I am, and that I just ‘have’ to believe what they say. [snip – over the top]
These people are not scientists, regardless of their degrees or their field of study. They are politicians, trying to shape public opinion for their own personal aggrandizement, and should be stripped of not only their current positions, but their degrees and any finances they may have.
This AGW scam could not be carried out by a few environmental exremists at CRU plus a few like minded blog monitors and one Al Gore. This is easily the biggest hoax in history. Are all of the governments in the world really dumb enough to fall for it? Well maybe they are that dumb, but I think there had to be pressure from powerful interest groups.
We need to start getting these low level crooks on the witness stand. My guess is they will start singing like canaries, and that should lead right to the top. The full extent of this scam must be exposed and the nefarious intention of those who promote it must be made public. Then the higher level crooks need to be prosecuted.
It’s interesting, though, to go to Connoley’s web-page where he discredits the notion that global cooling was predicted in the 70’s. http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/
He doesn’t really discredit it at all. What he ends up saying is that no one was actually stating unequivocally that we were entering a LIA. Links to the articles confirm this statement. Most of the articles use words like ‘could’ and ‘may be’ as opposed to ‘very likely’, ‘scientists agree’ and ‘the science is settled’.
Back in the day, scientists were apparently much more conservative in making predictions. This is one area where computers have not helped science. ‘GiGo; I don’t care if it’s right, I’ll make the prediction because I’ve got a model to back it up!’
Oh well, in the immortal words of BOC: “History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.”
As someone who has dealt with William Connolley extensively over the past few years, and someone that has an editing restriction from editing Connolley’s BLP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GoRight/Community_sanction), I think it is important to correct a factual mistake in this post. I have personally reviewed the history log for Connolley’s BLP and the last time he edited the page was 07:25, 15 September 2008 which made a minor correction and non-controversial correction.
In our passion to fight the systemic bias that does occur on Wikipedia in the GW pages, we must still strive to keep the record accurate and true. In this case, WMC is being falsely accused of wrong-doing and it should be corrected.
The Swedish TV company SVT has since long a traditional round table debate with each year’s Nobel laureates. This year they also covered a bit of climate research, in reference to the recent Climategate scandal, and scientific honesty. The section starts ca 13.50 into the programme:
http://svtplay.se/v/1823383/nobel_2009/snillen_spekulerar?cb,a1364145,1,f,-1/pb,a1364142,1,f,-1/pl,v,,1823383/sb,p117534,1,f,-1
I don’t know if this web TV service is available abroad (but I think so). The program is often exported to other TV companies, under the title “Science and Man” and may turn up on a local channel of yours. (The Swedish title “Snillen spekulerar” means “Geniuses speculates”.)
–Ahrvid
Ps. Not that while the term “climategate” isn’t mentioned, the scandal is named this in the Swedish subtitles!
@Lucy Skywalker (10:42:32) :
I went and made an account on neutralpedia. then when I found myself sitting down to write, I found myself going to Wikipedia… where I discovered this. This is the protection log on the climate gate page on wikipedia. You see, the climate gate page is not edit-able by people such as myself, it has been made this way by the people shown in this log. I highlighted Connoley
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4054/4207297548_cbe971810f_o.jpg
If you go to the User page for the user who signed the note about the “William Connolley” article, then click on “User contributions” you can spot this edit to User_talk:Certayne which is the creation of the quoted “I’m the original author…” message. The message is about the William Connolley article, not from him.
On the other hand, WC has recently deleted comments about himself in at least one Talk page. If you click on his name, then on “User contributions”, you see a list of his edits. Click on “prev” or “diff” to see the change.
@ur momisugly Frank
The National Post article is not from a blog. It was in the Saturday paper. I read it with my cup of coffee.
TheGoodLocust (12:14:37),
Thanks for correcting Zeke Hausfather’s dissembling. If Connolley uses others to do his dirty work because he can’t, what’s the difference?
I’m not surprised at Zeke’s defense of Connolley’s gaming of the system for his own climate alarmist agenda:
Zeke Hausfather (11:28:12) :
“Anthony, I think this post may be somewhat factually incorrect…”
.
I remember about six months ago Zeke was defending his pro-AGW blog, the “Yale Forum On Climate Change & The Media.” As I recall, Hausfather said he’d just found out the Yale blog was funded by a Leftist foundation, and said that his views were not influenced by their generous funding.
So I posted this information I found prominently displayed on his home page [which, BTW, is still there today]:
[Grantham is similar to Soros in its targeted funding of AGW advocacy blogs – while individual voluntary donations keep WUWT going.]
Zeke posted an excuse to the effect that he hadn’t noticed what was carried on his blog’s home page.
I still recall the short response from another poster when Zeke gave that story:
“Ouch for Zeke”!
Wikipeida’s co-founder Wiles isn’t a liberal but a libertarian (he was interviewed at length recently in Reason), who, I suspect, believes too much laissez faire in regard to his creation.
Wikipedian, ELF, et al…
Your appeals to participate in editing Wikipedia appear to be ludicrously disingenuous in the face of so many examples where people attempting to do that very thing have been unceremoniously barred from doing so, often in blatant and repeated violation of Wikipedia’s own rules.
All Wikipedians are equal, but some Wikipedians are more equal than others.
Wikipedian, ELF, GoRight-
I love the idea of Wikipedia and would love to support it. In my experience, in areas where I have expertise, it is usually a fantastic first reference. For example, the sections on geologic time and paleontology are first rate. However, in areas that are contentious, it is completely not credible. As you can guess, I believe that the climate science sections are one of those areas.
I thought about editing Wikipedia articles in climate science. I’m certainly knowledgeable and qualified. In the end I concluded, why spend the time it takes to write a good article if it will be deleted a few minutes later?
Furthermore, it appears to me that some are expert in gaming the system, though I’m speculating. So I have a couple of questions specifically pertaining to Connelly:
My understanding is that Connelly’s administrative privileges were revoked in September 2009. Is that correct and if so, why was he able to block an article on Climategate in November? And secondly, it is clear his article (on himself) has been extensively modified recently. Who did that if not him, and why did they delete the statement about his past punishments?
Have some fun, and take up the challenge. Everyone get together here to write an edit critical of some aspect of AGW which is widely and authoritatively agreed to be beyond any reasonable scientific question or dispute. When the edit is finished, someone from the group can post the edit to Wikipedia and demonstrate how long it lasts before being reverted into oblivion and posting privileges on Wikipedia denied. Call it another scientific experiment which relies on actual experimental evidence.
Please note that Connelly is part of the RealClimate “team” and one of his contributions was the “wiki project”. Please note this synopsis from RC:
William M. Connolley
Filed under: Contributor Bio’s— william @ur momisugly 6 December 2004
When I joined RC, I was a climate modeller with the British Antarctic Survey. Now I’m a software engineer for CSR. I’m still interested in communicating the science of climate change, but can no longer do so at a professional level.
I’m also elsewhere: the wikipedia project is developing into a useful resource, and my profile is User:William_M._Connolley. My personal vanity site is at http://www.xxxxxx.org.uk.
One of the people in the picture is me. Guess which.
ps: all my contributions online are released under the GFDL, unless I explicitly note otherwise.
Mr. Connelly even reverted my addition to Dr. Christy’s biographical page of his title as a “Distinguised Professor of Atmospheric Sciece” because he thought it was “puffery”. That was despite the fact that Wiki shows several classifications of Professorship with one of them being “distinguished”.
Forget about even changing one word on any site that has anything to do with carbon or climate. With or without him it will get reverted by others. I could not add the words “theory of” to references to AGW or global warming.
Good luck
Edward
We are the “Ministry of Truth” you will be assimilated.